Developing the UK’s e-infrastructure for science and innovation Report of the OSI e-Infrastructure Working Group SCIENCE INNOVATION KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER INVESTMENT GLOBAL LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE WEALTH CREATION

With e-infrastructure requirements common across research disciplines, across Government departments and across sectors, such an e-infrastructure can further these and other key national objectives and indeed, through its support of world-leading research, help answer some of the ‘grand challenges’ facing the UK and the wider world, such as climate change, an ageing population and the combating of disease. Technology is in large part driving globalisation – through increased specialisation, greater market integration and the removal of barriers, the sharing of knowledge and expertise and through its impact on worldwide economic growth. There is the danger, however, that in the new global market in which investment in technology and reward for innovation will increasingly determine a country’s economic performance, the developing countries will ‘leap frog ’ technological progress and overtake the world’s more established economies. Evidence already suggests that with massive investments being made in infrastructure development by rapidly industrialising countrie